Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport Editor

FLORENCE HALL, Trelawny:

EATING AT the World Cup isn't cheap. And if you're looking to gulp down a few beers, it costs a pretty penny too. Say you like to start the day with a nice, traditional Jamaican breakfast of ackee and saltfish. Just $450. Then say you're a real food person, who prefers to have anything between some brown stewed chicken, curried goat, oxtail or even fish, you are looking within a range of between $450 for chicken and $750 for brown stewed fish. Steamed fish costs more, $800 and up. Forget about another meal, that can be had at home. Think about adding a couple bottles of drinks and water - at $100 to $130 apiece, or beers at $200 - to the equation and then, per person, you could easily be looking at a $1,500 bill.

After all, this is the World Cup and the concessionaires pay quite a price to give patrons a rather expansive, sorry, expensive food.

Whatever figure they pay, none are too willing to divulge and the chief concessionaire, Goddard Catering, which runs food operations at both international airports here, rightly says it's confidential info only to be told by the people to whom they have sold concessions like patty giants Tastee, food joint Bi Bi Bits from Ochi and Versair, which runs snack/sandwich bars at the Norman Manley and Donald Sangster airports, among others.

The caterers, though, are given some amount of guarantee to load off at the patrons' cravings because nobody is allowed to take food or drinks into the venues. And to be fair, the prices are what you'd get at just about any upscale restaurant, club or dancehall session.

Pricelists

Versair's price list looks like this: baguette sandwiches with Swiss cheese, ham and cheese, salami, chicken or black forest ham, as well as chicken and cheese and ham and cheese wrap and chicken salad - $300; fruit salad $150 and doritos $120. Beverages - Red Stripe, Red Stripe Light, Guinness - $200, Gatorade - $190, Tropicana - $160 and Pepsi/soda/water $130.

This is Tastee's: patties - beef $100, vegetable, chicken, shrimp and meat loaf - $150 and fish and chicken sandwiches - $350. For drinks, it's $200 for Gatorade and $130 each for sodas and water.

Bi Bi Bits is quite mouth-watering, in more than one ways if you like it. Ackee and salt fish and brown stew chicken -$450, jerk chicken - $550, curried goat -$500, oxtail - $600, brown stewed fish and fried fish fillet of snapper and whole, escoveitch fish - $750, and steamed fish (whole) - $800 and up. The menus are served with rice and peas, white rice, green bananas, festival, salad and okrah and bammy.

They are prices to make the cash-till bubble over, but if sales since Monday - when the warm-up matches started at the Trelawny stadium - are anything to go by, the concessionaires haven't started licking their fingers as yet.

"Monday wasn't bad because we had a lot of local people here,: a Bi Bi Bits rep told The Gleaner of sales on the Windies-Kenya warm-up match day. "But only about 50 people came on Tuesday."

Selling at lower prices

The sales rep, who asked not to be identified, noted that they are actually selling at lower prices than they normally would at their base in Ocho Rios.

"I dropped my prices because we wouldn't make any sales."

A rep from Tastee, who have increased their prices, said: "Monday we got customers, it was the best day of all three. Tuesday was very slow and today is slow," she said referring to Tuesday and yesterday respectively.